Living in the O’s Fourth Birthday

Four years is a long time.

Four years marks some significant milestones in my life. I went to UC Berkeley for four years. My wife (then girlfriend) and I lived in our last apartment for just over four years. And as of today I’ve been blogging for four years.

During all of these four-year time periods, much has happened and I’ve grown so much. My years at Berkeley were marked by my evolution into an activist, my years in our last apartment by my growing love for my then girlfriend and my growing love for Oakland, but these four years blogging are a bit more difficult for me to define succinctly.

So I thought I’d mark them here with the blogoaksphere successes that stand out for me. These victories could not have been won without the help of multiple bloggers and blog readers. There are many more blogoaksphere successes, I’m sure, but these are the successes that mark my four years of blogging at Living in the O:

League of Women Voters Honors Oakland Bloggers with Making Democracy Work Award

A couple months ago I got a call from Helen Hutchison of the League of Women Voters of Oakland. My first thought was that my membership with the League must have lapsed because I couldn’t think of any other reason Helen would be calling me. I couldn’t have been much further off. She was calling me to inform me that the League planned to give Oakland bloggers the Making Democracy Work award at their annual luncheon.

I was ecstatic and I’m pretty sure a few tears welled up in my eyes. Much as Vsmoothe wrote in her blog post about the award yesterday, I never expected this blog to help make democracy work, and I certainly never expected to receive an award for that. I started this blog mostly as an outlet to write about my growing love for Oakland and never knew a substantial number of people would read it.